6 comments

1.Remember the Roman priest sex scandals and mentions (and dismissals) of the elephant in the room. Data to back that up (Hat Tip).

Two issues with this line of argument:

1. Apples-apples – Last time this came up I believe those making it were using reports of actual sexual abuse by priests on one side with any sort of sexual misconduct by public school employees on the other. That would mean not only the teacher having sex with a student but even a dirty or off color joke told by a teacher that a student may have heard.

2. Population mismatch. You’re comparing the # of priest victims with the # of public school victims. But only a small portion of children interact with priests….even in a Catholic school priests or nuns will be a minority of instructors! But most children go through the public school. Elementary epidemology would say you should be comparing *rates* of abuse then, not raw numbers.

8.This is stupid. Unsurprisingly the Democrat response was equally stupid.

This petition site sounds more like a wiki-type endeavor. Anyone can start a petition that says anything…if it gets 50K signatures the White House will ‘address it’ which can simply be done by issuing a statement.

But the response doesn’t seem to stupid to me, I believe special provisions had to be made for CSA soldiers to preserve their citizenship after the war, Robert E Lee’s citizenship was restored in the mid 1970’s. Granted signing a stupid petition shouldn’t cost someone their citizenship, but those playing with it are barking up that tree. If it ever became serious, it would be unfair NOT to strip them of their citizenship while those who fought for the CSA were.

Which is what exactly? This latest ‘hypothesis’ is that the Obama administration was so committed to the Libya was caused by the video line that Petreus backed it up in the hopes that he could keep his job after his affair was uncovered. Some issues:

1. No such committment is in the public record. Mark produced a timeline of obama quotes almost all of which said point blank he wasn’t going to say who was behind the attack or why until more facts could be gathered. Even Susan Rice’s Meet the Press interview prefaced her statement by emphasizing how precarious the preliminary investigation was. There simply is no evidence the Obama administration wanted Libya to have been caused by the video. Instead it was a very plausible working hypothesis given the fact that at the same time there were riots in over 20 Muslim cities plus attacks and attempted attacks on other embassies around the Muslim world. So if the Obama administration wasn’t all that emotionally invested in the video explanation, why would Petreus feel ‘protected’ by giving it cover?

2. It’s probably unlikely that the investigation would have been shared with the upper levels of the Obama administration until later on. This is simple adminstrative dynamics. You’re not going to go to the President and claim the CIA director is in trouble unless you’re sure….otherwise you’re going to have egg on your face big time. To make sure, the FBI asked Petreus whether the emails were his and then he knew he had been ‘outed’ and resigned.

Seriously? You’re working hard to destroy your credibility. Let’s see, exile in response to signing a petition … hmm, the civil rights intellectual roots have withered on the vine for the left it seems.

And then she went ahead anyhow and pushed the line that she knew wasn’t true

Evidence?

It was never at all plausible. None of the riots were motivated by the video, that being a plausible explanation for any of them doesn’t work.

Really? We have riots in over 20 cities where rioters where chanting about the videos. Even you claimed the videos were ‘pretext’, by which I think you mean the rioters are asserting they are motivated by the videos when in fact they are motivated by something else….which if true would nonetheless link nearly all the incidents to the video except possibly for Libya.

Exile wouldn’t be necessary, of course, I’m just pointed out a consquence of demanding succession can be loss of citizenship. This here is the childish phase of the right wing. The 10 year old screams at his parents that he hates them and wishes they’d go away forever. The parents point out that if he feels that way he can make his own dinner and find his own place to live. The 10 year old screams that they are being horribly mean and unreasonable!